3 Poems by Lark Beltran

Collective Consciousness

There is a pool, a well, a thought-born sea -
archived visions of millennia
steeped in ethereal reservoir beyond
Earth´s tumult, waiting to re-kindle
mind in meditation probing for truth
like searchlight, drawn to its abode.
It holds the best of us:
our love-spun dreams and dramas,
Utopian aims, art´s classic symmetries,
democracy and brotherhood and agape.
It holds the worst of us:
the hate-spun offal-sludge
of hurtful actions, all that has oppressed
and bloodied history.  Let us cast
the dross aside, fix on the harmony,
collect the scattered pearls
within the pool, the well, that thought-born sea.


Distant Music in the Dead of Night

Distant music in the dead of night
summons the misty tendrils of regret:
the pang of words ill-spoken, goals unmet,
a hollowness which reason cannot fight.
The power of parental scorn to smite
wields pain across the decades´parapet;
age and its emblems are no amulet.
Though long years in the grave that parent´splight,
I feel the timbre of his reprimand,
ghostly, still rigid in its point of view,
drawing the chastened child from shadowland
to cringe at paltry errors in review.
Philosophy may hold the upper hand;
a whisper of Mancini will undo!


Hide and Seek

Natural as the outcome of the acorn is the oak
is gist of life from Grand Idea, shrouded as by smoke.
Man´s puzzled minds mull over messages from hall of mirrors.
Values vary with perception; virtues bind with errors.

Philosophers and poets vie with poets in the game:
seeking encapsulation of The Truth as precious gem.
Should spirit riddle every ripple of that cosmic pool,
one´s safest course of action is to live the Golden Rule.


Bionote

Lark Beltran, originally from northern California, has lived in Peru for many years, along with her Peruvian husband, as an ESL teacher.  They alternate between the capital and their little house in the central jungle without electricity.  Lark´s poems have appeared in quite a few online and offline journals. larkbeltran@hotmail.com